Scratching New Niches Entrepreneurs Soothe A Rash Of Public Needs

Strategies

November 27, 1989|By Harry Straight of The Sentinel Staff

Business ideas can be found just about anywhere.

Kathy Ester discovered hers rolled up on the front doorstep. Mike Benjamin found his at the bottom of a swimming pool. Deborah DiGiacomo found inspiration in an automobile junkyard. And Diane West turned her compulsion to organize into a new career.

These four Central Florida entrepreneurs have started new enterprises within the past two years and each still struggles to gain a foothold. Most have quit their jobs to devote themselves full time to the new businesses.

Each is a product of the times, driven by new technology and changing lifestyles. They have found what they believe to be just the right market nitch.

More companies are specializing in services that focus on small, previously unserved needs, and analysts attribute that trait to an improving success rate for small businesses. A recent survey revealed that almost 80 percent of new small businesses succeed.

Here are four stories:

ProTec International A few pieces of string, a cardboard box and society's growing concern about the environment led 44-year-old Kathy Ester and her brother-in-law, Dewey Carpenter, to form ProTec International in September.

The product: Paper Station, a patented cardboard box and cartridge of string that allows consumers to bundle newspapers for recycling.

The marketing strategy: Instead of selling the boxes directly to the public, at $2.79 apiece, ProTech is trying to convince companies to advertise on them. That would permit her to give the boxes away.

''It's a terrific public relations idea,'' said Ester, president of the Orlando company.

She also is trying to get charities, such as boys and girls clubs and scouts, to purchase the boxes in bulk - at about $2.79 each - and then sell them as part of their fund-raising efforts.

Paper Station isn't on the street, yet. ''Most companies we are negotiating with are geared up to start their programs around the first of the year,'' said Ester, a former marketing director for a credit-card company.

In keeping with the growing environmental consciousness of the public, Ester already has her next product in mind: a box for recycling oil - for the do-it-yourself auto mechanic.

Aquavox Inc.

Several years ago, a scuba-diving friend of Cape Canaveral inventor Mike Benjamin suggested that he come up with a way for divers to talk to each other under water.

''Gee, that sounds simple,'' Benjamin recalls saying. But it took 5 1/2 years, and ''figuring out 10,000 ways not to talk under water,'' before he came up with the answer.

When the first prototype of Aquavox was produced two years ago on a cold November day, Benjamin rushed home and talked his girlfriend into jumping into the pool to test the device.

Benjamin made it worth her while, however. With a feeling, he said, that harkened back to Alexander Graham Bell's first words over a telephone, Benjamin used the opportunity to propose - under water - to his future wife.

There are several electronic products selling for $500 and upwards that allow divers to communicate under water. But Benjamin's is the first acoustic, all mechanical device. It is basically an oxygen mask that fits over the diver's mouth, replacing the mouthpiece that's normally used.

The mask, which has no moving parts, works by focusing the diver's voice through a ''sound lens.''

Voices can be heard from as far away as 30 feet away - ''with practice,'' he said.

Benjamin has sold about 5,000 masks at $99.95 retail.

About half of his sales have been in Japan, where people are eager for trendy American products, Benjamin said. ''So far, the Japanese have not been able to duplicate the product, so it sells very well over there.''

But tapping a foreign market wasn't part of Benjamin's original business plan. ''They came to me,'' Benjamin said. ''I was showing the device at an international trade fair and the Japanese saw it and wanted to market it in their country.''

The next step for Aquavox Inc. is to find venture capital so that it can increase production and marketing.

''We can't continue as a mom-and-pop operation much longer,'' he said.

Deluxe Tire Co.

Deborah DiGiacomo said she knows ''tires ain't pretty,'' but when she picked up her first load of used tires for her new recycling business two years ago, ''I couldn't believe the mess.''

The 35-year-old former nurse has turned one man's junk into a thriving business in DeLand, with 13 employees who process about 1,500 tires a day into a wide range of products.

DiGiacomo started recycling tires in August 1988 because she wanted a business that did something positive for the environment.

At first, she simply got paid by service stations, auto dealers and repair shops for hauling tires off to a landfill.

But she soon began thinking of ways to use the old tires and, in March, began manufacturing a number of products, such as warehouse-dock bumpers, wheel chocks, insulated floor mats and a kind of ground cover.

The company's edge: Being able to efficiently cut up steel-belted tires.